A sizeable crowd was gathering outside. Tarlok was talking to them. Damn! Macurdy thought. If we don't get this gate open right now, we're going to look like a bunch of clowns to these people.

"Captain! There's a guy here's got something he says is important."

"Have him wait! Where the hell is that ax?" As he asked it, a man ran up with one and handed it to him. Macurdy stepped up to the wagon gate, eyed the U-shaped padlock bolt, wound up and hit it as hard as he could. The body of the lock fell to the ground. He grabbed the chain, hanging loose now, and pulled it out of the eyebolts, then four of his men shoved the gate open.

The person with the important information was a boy of about fifteen years. He'd seen someone come out of his father's horse shed, leading his father's best horse, a man wearing the helmet of a bailiff's armsman. He'd mounted and ridden quietly south, headed out of town.

The outside guard, Macurdy suspected, on his way to notify the reeve.

The next man who wanted to talk to him was the village spokesman, the man voted by the villagers to represent them with the bailiff. He was agonizing over the tax girls. When Macurdy said he was sending them home, the spokesman blinked with surprise, then shook his head. "The reeve has already been sent an inventory. He will come here and take them back; hunt them down if he must." The man looked worriedly into Macurdy's face. "It's best if you can take them to a safe place."

For just a moment the two men traded gazes. Shit! Macurdy thought, things must be bad here, if he's putting his trust in us. "All right," he said, "but two of them are children. Bring me a woman of the village, a strong one who can ride well, to look after them. And tell your people why we took them."

He turned away from the spokesman and went to check on the loading of the packhorses, to make sure they weren't overburdened. They'd have to keep up with the saddle mounts. But the spokesman, he became aware, was following him anxiously. "Excuse me, Captain," he said. "Did you know the reeve has stationed his company at a farm on the Great Road? They are more centrally located there, and also much nearer to us. If they arrive before you leave…"

"Tarlok!" Macurdy bellowed, and the man came running. Briefly they talked, and given this new information, Macurdy decided they had little or no chance of making it via the North Fork Road. They'd have to go back the way they'd come, and as quickly as they could. He sent one of his best riders, a youth who might have weighed 120 pounds, on the bailiff's best horse, to find Wollerda and let him know the trap was aborted.

Hurriedly they then finished loading the pack horses with two bags each of wheat. The tax girls and the woman who'd tend them were helped onto five of the bailiff's horses. Another townsman had told him there were tax cattle in a paddock just outside town, and Macurdy sent men to get them. The guards there had fled too, it turned out.

When they rode north out of the village, they had not only the pack string, but the tax girls, and three village youths who insisted they wanted to join the rebel band. And eight of the tax cattle. The rest had scattered, and there was no time to round them up.

When he rode away from town at the head of his column, Macurdy already could see faint dawnlight along the eastern horizon. Before long he could see a mile or more. No one seemed sleepy, and from time to time they trotted their horses. The sun rose, and began its daily trip. They passed farmers on the road or at chores, or in the fields-men and women who stared worriedly at them, and kept out of their way. Meadow larks challenged each other in liquid notes, while marsh hawks soared over the hay fields, watching for rodents. Gradually the morning warmed, but remained less than hot; the humidity was low and the breeze pleasant. It would be easy, Macurdy told himself, to think the danger was over, if there'd been any in the first place. And maybe it was over, but that seemed unlikely.

After a bit, Blue Wing found him. "Macurdy! Macurdy!" he cawed, and Macurdy, pulling off the rutted, hoof-packed road, waited while the column passed. Waited for what he was sure was bad news. A rail fence bordered the road there, and with uplifted wings, the great raven braked to land on it. Carrying on a conversation in flight was difficult.

"You are not where you told me you'd be!" he said accusingly.

"I found out things I hadn't known. The North Fork Road's too dangerous. We'd have been caught."

"They're coming! Many more of them than you! And they're riding faster! You'd better hurry!"

"Thanks. We'll go as fast as we dare, but we don't dare wear the horses out." And the pack string may start to gallop, and the cattle. That'll use them up fast.

The cattle, Macurdy decided, were the most dispensable, but he'd keep them as long as he could. "How close have they gotten? Have they forded the creek with the brushy banks?"

Blue Wing looked at him exasperated. "Most of the creeks around here have brushy banks."

"The creek with brush that comes up to the road. The next to last creek we crossed between here and the village."

"I'll see." The bird flexed its legs, and launched itself with a whoosh! whoosh! of powerful wing strokes. Then Macurdy urged his big gelding into a canter, to catch the head of the column again.

The great raven was back before many minutes, and Macurdy and Tarlok pulled off the road while the column passed. Their pursuers had crossed the creek, Blue Wing said, were well past it. Tarlok shook his head. "We won't reach the forest before they catch us. Not unless we leave the pack string behind, and the cattle. And if we do that, they'll say they beat us-that we quit. That we're scared of them. And the story will spread."

"Right." And it'll kill the optimism people have been feeling. Especially these guys. He turned to Blue Wing again. "There are two places ahead where we rode through woods last night, after we left the forest, but I couldn't see well enough to know what it's like there. Go take a look for me."

Again the great raven left, then returned. Blue Wing always described things differently than a human would, but it seemed to Macurdy there were opportunities in those woods.

He chose one squad and told them what he had in mind for them. The country here was higher, sloping generally southward, and where the woods farther south were mostly in scattered small blocks, here they were irregular, oriented on irregularities in the terrain. It was midmorning when Macurdy came to a broad shallow draw, with a creek running through it flanked by woods. By that time Blue Wing had swooped low a couple of times to urge speed; their pursuit was getting close. Looking back, Macurdy could see a dust cloud: the reeve's men. No doubt they were trotting their horses by intervals.

He and Tarlok kicked their own animals to a brief downhill canter, leading the column into the draw. When they were well into the trees, Macurdy and the squad he'd chosen drew up. Tarlok pulled off too, and called for the others to halt.

"Captain," he said quietly, "do you figure on staying here with them?"

"Yep."

"Best you leave me with them. Lose you, and the whole company will melt away like maple sugar in the rain. But lose me and folks will hardly notice."

"I'd notice."

Tarlok ignored the reply. "By now, everyone knows what you've done. You get yourself killed, and people from Gormin Town to Three Forks to the Saw Pit Valley will lose heart. While most of them never heard of me." Tarlok turned to the others and called out. "Men! Anyone here think the captain lacks guts?"

The chorus of noes was emphatic; there was even laughter, as if the thought was ridiculous. Tarlok nodded, satisfied. "Captain," he said, still loudly, "you don't need to stay here because it's more dangerous. What you need to do is ride on with the column, for the same damn reason."